Overflowing with Valvoline

I opened the Kansas City Star this afternoon and saw my favorite comic strip dealing with my favorite subject. Optimism is a recurring theme in Zippy the Pinhead, and I was especially interested in the tie-in with the magically-appearing image on Zerbina's flapjack--another topic I visited recently. (To see the strip, click here, or visit Bill Griffith's site here. Sorry, but I could not get a readable version to print on this blog.)
I take comfort from the comic strips in my struggles with optimism. "Little Orphan Annie" notwithstanding, many of the comic strip artists seem to be wrestling with the same dark questions and doubts as me. (On second thought, maybe I shouldn't have said that about Annie. I've never really read that strip.)
Unlike a lot of optimism and self-help advice, the comic strips are at least honest. Is it better to deceive yourself into the happiness of optimism, or to look at the realities and become totally despondent? It's a question that hovers constantly over Zippy, and I'm grateful to see someone else asking it.
I've looked at just enough optimism advice to make me think there's something wrong with me that I can't just flip a switch in my head to change my thinking. So it's nice to know that comic strip artists are working through the same issues.
Here's a good one from the New Yorker--another source of dryly funny comics.

You can read it, recognize the pessimism and laugh at the same time. And that just makes me feel...better. Maybe my cup truly is overflowing with Valvoline.

Here's some animation on the subject;